The present invention relates to equipment for cleaning, sterilizing and lubricating dental handpieces and contra angles, including turbines.
Handpieces and contra-angles, including, turbines, are relatively complicated instruments which, via a hose system, are supplied with both air and water to the so-called spray channels, and compressed air to turbine instruments, while for certain instruments even a moment of rotation is transferred via a mechanical coupling. During the use of an instrument, e.g. for drilling, a flow of air and water is blown out through the respective spray channels against the drilling spot. The supply of air and water, which may be individually adjusted, has the purpose of cooling and cleaning the drilling spot. When the drilling function is stopped, also the air and water supply are stopped, and a brief suction through the channels prevents afterdripping of water from the water channel. By this suction, liquid from the mouth of the patient may be sucked into the spray channels. It may be both spit and blood, which is blown out again when the instrument is restarted. This is acceptable during the treatment of the individual patient, but of course not by the initial treatment of a new patient, in particular because there may be infectious matter in the sucked-up liquid from the preceding patient, Likewise, disease carriers may remain at the outside of the instrument. Therefore, it is a rising demand that these instruments undergo a cleaning and sterilising process before each initial patient treatment.
By way of example, this process may be carried out by firstly effecting an exterior mechanical cleaning of the instruments, secondly a through-blowing of the interior parts with compressed air and a spray lubrication of the movable parts, whereafter the instruments are placed in an autoclave as already used for the autoclaving of other relevant equipment. Such an autoclaving is very important because even after the flushing of the said channels, these may still hold germ remnants. When the dentist has at disposal more sets of the discussed instruments, there may at any time be instruments ready for use, whilst one or more sets may be under cleaning and autoclaving.
The manual work in connection with the cleaning and lubrication of the instruments can be rather troublesome, and different auxiliaries have already been developed, even including an apparatus which can do the job in a semi or fully automatical manner, requiring the instruments to be mounted on holding stubs provided with supply channels for cleaning and lubricating liquids from respective sources. Thereby the work is facilitated, as it is sufficient to insert the instruments and later on, when they are ready, take them out for final treatment in the autoclave.
However, this treatment of the instruments is not fully suitable, inter alia because the applied cleaning liquids are of such a character that they act decomposingly on the non-metallic parts, e.g. gaskets. Also, the cleaning liquids are not fully effective against all kinds of deposits, and the entire cleaning procedure runs over a rather long period of time. Moreover, the applied cleaning liquids are toxious and only desinfectingxe2x80x94not sterilizing. Thus, exsuction from these apparatuses is required.
The invention has for its purpose to provide for an apparatus enabling a more efficient cleaning, sterilizing and lubrication of the discussed instruments.
The invention is based on the basic consideration that it will be highly advantageous to make use of a heat generator in such a cleaning equipment, because it is then possible to make use of hot water/steam for the flushing of the channels, which has been found to have a high cleaning effect, and also because the entire equipment can then be designed as one single apparatus housing or constituting the required autoclave, which, in a very simple manner, may consist of the chamber in which the instruments are mounted on the said holding stubs. This chamber will be adapted especially for receiving the relevant instruments, so with a pressure tight construction it will constitute an ideal, integrated autoclave combined with an operative treatment chamber receiving the impurities blown out of the instruments. This treatment chamber may be connected with the required drainage means and otherwise be suitable designed for the particular purpose.
With such as apparatus it will be a further possibility to initiate the cleaning by letting oil through the rotating parts of the instruments, this being effectively loosening for many impurities, not least for solidified oil remnants. It is possible to operate with compressed air, oil, water and air and, optionally, hot steam, whereby there are different possibilities making the use of special cleaning liquids superfluous, and even removing the need of exsuction. The cleaning can be effected rapidly and effectively, and not least the integrated autoclavation in a small and quickly heated chamber will imply a noticeably reduced process time with a low energy consumption.
Since the described process proceeds automatically, time is made free for the assistant, who will usually do the manual cleaning work with the instruments, to carry out other jobs. Moreover, the short treating time will imply that the dentist should not have at disposal as many sets of instruments as if they were cleaned conventionally. It should be mentioned, however, that according to the invention it is preferred to make use of an autoclavation time longer than the briefest possible, viz. at a moderate autoclavation temperature, e.g. 121xc2x0 C. with an associated overpressure of one bar through approximately 20 minutes. It is not unknown that customers can be attracted by autoclaves operable to treat the instruments at reduced time with the use of a higher temperature, but it seems certain that the durability of the instruments will then be noticeably reduced, primarily by a breaking down their gaskets. It will be more economical to procure the extra instruments required due to a longer autoclavation time, but in return they can be expected to have a much longer operational lifetime.